Romney’s Rivals Challenge Front-Runner’s Record at Bain

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is seen reflected in a mirror as he speaks to to the Nashua Chamber of Commerce in Nashua, New Hampshire on Jan. 9, 2012. Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Landov

Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mitt Romney told voters on the eve
of today’s New Hampshire primary that he likes “being able to
fire people who provide services to me,” giving ammunition to
rivals in the Republican presidential race criticizing him over
his tenure as chief executive officer of a private equity
company.

In comments to several hundred listeners at a breakfast
meeting of the Nashua Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Romney
said: “If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I
want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide
this service to me.’”

His off-the-cuff comments were about health-care providers.
That didn’t stop his opponents from using them to intensify
attacks over whether his push for profits as founder and CEO of
the Boston-based private equity company Bain Capital LLC came at
the expense of workers. In addition, the state’s largest
television station, WMUR-TV in Manchester, carried it as a top
news story.

The focus on Romney’s experience included new questions
raised about the former Massachusetts governor’s assertion that
he’d helped create a net of 100,000 jobs while at the firm.

‘Cooked’ Numbers

“Those numbers can easily be cooked,” Huntsman said at
Crosby Bakery in Nashua.

The exchanges yesterday illustrated a sharp turn in tone
before New Hampshire voters cast ballots in the first-in-the-nation Republican primary, as Romney’s opponents maneuvered to
become his chief challenger.

Several hundred miles away in Anderson, South Carolina,
Texas Governor Rick Perry talked about local businesses that
were “looted” by Bain Capital, saying it was the “ultimate
insult” for Romney to campaign in the state.

During a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire,
former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said it’s necessary to
examine Romney’s record in the private sector because there’s a
difference between “looting” a company and engaging in
standard business practices.

“Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of
rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people
and walk off with the money or is that, in fact, somehow a
little bit of a flawed system?” Gingrich told reporters. “I do
draw a distinction between looting a company, leaving behind
broken families and broken neighborhoods and leaving behind a
factory that should be there.”

‘A Huge Problem’

He expanded on that theme in an interview this morning on
Bloomberg Television, saying, “I don’t have much respect if you
rig the game so you end up walking off with all the money.”
Speaking from Concord, Gingrich called on Romney to hold a news
conference to discuss his time at Bain and said that “if he
can’t explain it,” then “ he has a huge problem.”

Romney backers dismissed his comments about firing service
providers as a minor misstatement. New Hampshire Representative
Charles Bass, a Republican who supports Romney, told Bloomberg
Television that the candidate’s remarks were in the context of
picking another health insurer, a point that his opponents
overlooked.

“He makes little mistakes, we all do,” Bass said. “These
things will be taken out of context.”

Attacks From Republicans

Romney accused his rivals of doing just that, and said he
was surprised to see attacks on business coming from his
Republican rivals instead of President Barack Obama.

“Free enterprise will be on trial,” he told reporters in
Hudson, New Hampshire. “I thought it was going to come from the
president, from the Democrats on the left, but instead it’s
coming from Speaker Gingrich and apparently others. That’s just
part of the process. I’m not worried about that.”

As he has for days, Romney touted his record at Bain
Capital, which he helped found.

“I’m happy to describe my experience in the private
economy and the fact that if you take all of the businesses that
we invested in over our many years, over 100 different
businesses and collectively they net-net added over 100,000 new
jobs,” he said.

In response to Bloomberg News inquiries for documentation
about his assertion, Romney’s campaign cited new hires at just
three companies: Staples Inc., the Sports Authority Inc. and
Domino’s Pizza Inc. The data didn’t account for dozens of other
companies Romney says the firm invested in during his time
there.

Troubled Businesses

A Bloomberg News review of several Bain deals during
Romney’s tenure found that not all of Bain’s investments were
beneficial for workers. Several ran into trouble, dismissing
hundreds of workers, filing for bankruptcy or facing lawsuits
from shareholders who said they were misled by management.

One such example was Dade Behring Inc., a Deerfield,
Illinois-based medical-testing company, where Bain cut at least
1,600 jobs after taking over the company.

Bain doesn’t track the number of jobs created by its
investments and won’t release comprehensive information about
the deals completed during Romney’s time at the firm.

“Romney is acting no differently than politicians in
office when they talk about all the jobs that government
programs have created without looking at the cost side of the
ledger,” said David Primo, a business administration professor
at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York.

South Carolina Primary

With Romney leading in the polls in New Hampshire, the rest
of the Republican field is looking ahead to the next primary on
Jan. 21 in South Carolina as their best chance of stopping him
from an easy march to the party’s nomination.

The attacks on Romney injected a shot of vitality into what
had been a relatively sleepy campaign in New Hampshire. While
the candidates have spent much of the week greeting voters and
touring the state, their events have lacked the intensity of the
campaign that led up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

Romney was favored by 37 percent of likely New Hampshire
primary voters surveyed in a tracking poll released today by the
Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston. U.S.
Representative Ron Paul was second with 18 percent, followed by
Huntsman at 16 percent, former Senator Rick Santorum of
Pennsylvania at 11 percent, Gingrich at 9 percent and Perry at 1
percent. The Texas governor is focusing his efforts on South
Carolina.

Sliding Support

Romney’s support has slid from 43 percent in Suffolk’s
survey released Jan. 3; Paul was second with 16 percent.

Paul was forced to cut short an event at a Manchester
coffee shop after it was overrun with hundreds of journalists.
His campaign put out a statement apologizing for the incident,
saying that “Basic safety simply must come first.”

Paul “has a lot to gain or lose here,” said Steve Duprey,
who as a Republican National Committee member from New Hampshire
is neutral in the race. “If there’s any state where Ron Paul
could make a really powerful showing it’s in New Hampshire,
where there’s a strong libertarian streak.”

Still, the only way Romney could emerge weakened from
today’s balloting is if he draws less than 30 percent of the
vote, said Duprey, who worked on Arizona Senator John McCain’s
winning 2008 Republican primary campaign in the state.

Santorum dropped in on the lunch crowd yesterday at Mary
Ann’s Diner in downtown Nashua to shake hands and make a last
plea for votes.

“I was for Romney until a week ago when I saw Santorum on
C-SPAN,” said Ken Hepworth, 71, a retired software engineer, as
he ordered a tuna sandwich and clam chowder amid the crush of
reporters following Santorum. “This fellow’s really real, and
Romney -- I like everything about him, but I’m not sure it’s
real.”

Neither Hepworth nor his wife, Jackie, had made a final
choice on a candidate. “We’ve still got a whole 24 hours,” she
said.